Chapter 23: The Drowned Gate

At a quarter to midnight the tide went out from under the Drowned Gate, and the arch stood up out of the bay.

I stood on the rock below it in my father's yellow jacket.

Gus was in the skiff fifty yards off with a lantern, and he lifted his pipe to me.

Neris stood at the edge of the pool with her mother on her arm.

Her mother was a gaunt woman with white hair who had not seen the sky in eleven months.

The woman looked at me, and then she looked at the shell on its cord at my chest, and she bowed her head.

I couldn't speak.

All around the Gate the court floated in the moonlit swell, a thousand lit eyes on the water.

"You are afraid," Soren said at my shoulder.

"Of the water? Yes. Always."

"Then we will not go in far."

"No," I said. "We will."

I took his hand, and I walked down the rock into the sea.

It was black and cold, and it came up my shins, my knees, my hips.

My father had gone into this water and not come back.

I breathed in, and out, and I did not stop.

Soren walked beside me until it reached his waist, and the tail came back in a flash of silver, and he pulled me against him.

He was shaking.

"Minnie Marlow," he said, and his voice rang off the arch. "I claim you."

The Speaker, somewhere in the dark, said, "The Gate hears it."

A pulse of light ran across the water.

"Now you," Soren whispered.

"I don't know the words."

"You do not need them."

I put both my hands on his face.

His skin was wet and warm, and the silver hair clung to his cheeks.

"Soren Halvane," I said. "You blushed when I wiped your tail. I've been in trouble ever since."

He laughed, and a tear ran down his cheek.

"I claim you," I said. "You're mine. And I'm not letting go."

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